Russian capsule docks at space station

KOROLYOV, Russia -- A Russian cosmonaut was forced to dock a Soyuz capsule carrying U.S. billionaire tourist Charles Simonyi manually at the international space station Saturday after a sensor monitoring the engines apparently malfunctioned.

Engineers played down the incident, but it renewed recent questions about Russia's otherwise famously reliable spacecraft.

Vladimir Solovyov, flight director for the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said that just a few minutes before the docking time an autopilot signal went off showing that one of Soyuz engines might have failed.

Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka reported that the engines were operating normally and he took manual control of the capsule to keep an emergency computer program from thrusting the engines and sending the craft backing away from the station.

"We took the decision not to allow that," Solovyov told a news conference at Russia's mission control in Korolyov, on Moscow's outskirts.

"We have to figure out what happened," he said.

The docking by Padalka appeared otherwise smooth and was slightly ahead of schedule, roughly two days after the capsule blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan's barren steppe. Applause broke out among space officials and crew relatives gathered at mission control after the hookup was announced.

Cosmonauts typically receive extensive training in the event that Soyuz's autopilot fails or some other problem pops up.

"Everyone worked wonderfully, on the ground and on the space craft. There were no uncontrolled situations," said Vitaly Lopota, chief engineer with Soyuz manufacturer RKK Energia.

Padalka and U.S. astronaut Michael Barratt are joining the station's current crew, while Simonyi, who is making his second trip as a paying customer to the space station, returns to Earth on April 7 along with cosmonaut Yuri Lonchakov and NASA astronaut Michael Fincke.

Some three hours after docking, the crews opened the hatches and Padalka, Barratt and Simonyi floated in to greet the station's occupants — Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, NASA astronaut Michael Fincke and cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov — with hugs, smiles and handshakes.

"We had a great ride up here and the docking was a little bit of excitement but we're very glad to be here and the station looks great," Barratt said later in a video-hook up with mission control.

"It was an awfully fun ride," he said after wishing his wife Michelle a happy anniversary.

Simonyi, a Hungarian-born software designer, exchanged greetings with his brother in Hungarian. Padalka's daughter sang a small song while Padalka played with a small stuffed animal that floated about the station's compartment.

Simonyi, who helped build software for Microsoft Corp., is expected to be the last paying customer to travel aboard Russian spacecraft to the station for the foreseeable future since the station's permanent crew is expanding from three to six.

Simonyi plans on conducting medical and radiation experiments and chatting with schoolchildren via ham radio and with his family via video stream during his tenure on the station.

The three Soyuz crew arrived just three days after the departure of the U.S. space shuttle Discovery, following a 13-day mission of which the highlight was the successful installation and unfurling of the station's last pair of solar wings.

The touchdown of the Discovery and its crew was scheduled for late Saturday at NASA's spaceport.

Russia's Progress and Soyuz vehicles have long been the workhorses of the space station program, regularly shuttling people and cargo to the orbiting outpost. They took on greater importance when the U.S. space shuttle fleet was temporarily grounded in the wake of the 2003 Columbia disaster.

Saturday's incident was the latest of several mishaps in recent years to hit Russia's spacecraft, which otherwise have a reputation for reliability and safety.

Last year, a Soyuz capsule returning from the station landed hundreds of miles off target in Kazakhstan after hurtling through Earth's atmosphere in a steeper-than-normal descent that subjected the crew to severe G-forces.

In 2004, a crew arriving at the space station had to turn off the autopilot on their Soyuz and manually connect to the docking point after a problem resulted in the craft approaching the station at a dangerously high speed.